lead us not into technology

Interesting post on another blog here about how websites, by giving information in a non-personal way (i.e. you don't have to talk to someone) can make less effective an organisation that thrives on interpersonal contact.

Finally got round to booking a quiet day today. Had a phone conversation with a friend in Darlington last night who encouraged me to do less and reflect more. That doesn't come naturally, and in my head I know that busyness doesn't equal effectiveness, but 'look busy' is one of my default settings, and it takes a lot of effort to snap out of that.

O Lord, give me the wisdom of Ronald Reagan. (The sign on his desk read 'hard work never killed anyone but I figure, why take the risk?)

tried to upload an image to blogger so people can see what I look like, but it's sliced off the bottom of my face. Or is it a blogveil?

quotes

Having a day to read today, working through 'The Shaping of things to come' by Hirsch & Frost. Some selections:

“The kind of thinking that will solve the worlds problems will be of a different order to the kind of thinking that created those problems in the first place.” (Einstein)

“Jesus said go into all the world. He didn’t say sit in your church and wait for people to come to you.”

“Christology determines missiology, and missiology determines ecclesiology. It is absolutely vital that the church gets the order right.” (i.e. the form of the church is a result of our understanding of mission, and the form of mission is a result of our understanding of Jesus, because Jesus is the way we understand and encounter God)

“If you are digging a hole in one place, and you realise you need to dig it elsewhere, you don’t get there by digging gin the same place, only deeper. And yet churches, whden they realise that the old 'attractional' mode isn’t working, seem to believe that if they just do attractional church better, it will work. And… many of the church growth seminars and conferences are simply repackaging the traditional mode and promoting it to struggling churches as the only way to grow.” ('attractional' = church meeting in a set time and building, mission consists in recruiting people out of the surrounding community to 'come to church')

“Any church that cannot get by without buildings, finances and paid experts is not fully being church.”

“If we could start church all over again from scratch, would we do it the way it’s currently being done?”

"When we speak of our virtues, we are competitors. When we confess our sins, we become brothers" (Karl Barth)

Major achievement of the week

has been signing up to Dave Walkers Cartoon church website for a year, which means I can use things like this


for the next 12 months. Some are already doing the rounds of parish newsletters in the Yeovil area. At least, I hope that's the way it works, otherwise the cartoonchurch lawyers will be onto me.

Interesting front page on todays Telegraph on day nurseries, about a letter from childcare experts on whether being sent to day nurseries is good for the development of under-3s. The argument is that the best thing for children up to 2 1/2 years is to develop attachment with parents, as this is the best for their emotional development. There's the fascinating comment "we have never had an economy or a government that puts less value on love" Discuss....

The emphasis in government policy seems to be to recycle young parents back into the workforce as quickly as possible - provision of lucrative tax credits for people working and paying for childcare, the policy of free nursery time for children 3 and over, the aim of providing 'wraparound care' at schools so that parents can work a full working day and leave their children at school from 8am to 6pm, the consistent resistance to EC laws which limit the working week, etc. One one level, you could say this is all good enabling stuff, making it easier for parents to rejoin the workforce. The flipside is a rising sense of expecation on mothers to go back to work, and a culture of having children and then outsourcing their care to other people. Witness Madonna sending her nanny to fetch her new adopted child, rather than going herself - what's that all about?

The same paper has a story about 'Gymkids', who have developed fitness machines aimed at children - rowing machines, exercise bikes etc., all with calorie counters. Another example of exporting adult culture into the childrens world?

Better stop before I get into an ill-informed rant about all the other things that bother me as a parent of 2 pre-school kids.

Disturbances

I'm being disturbed by strange things at the moment
- our daughter has lost her 'monkey' stuffed toy - we bought two, so she still has one left - and having searched everywhere there's still no sign. Oddly, the thought of monkey lying by the street in last nights wind and rain upsets me. Or it seems odd that it should upset me, but perhaps it isn't.......
- I've been 2 weeks in this job, but it's still not been officially announced that I've got it, despite being appointed in June. Even though I've got a nice piece of paper with the Bishops seal and lots of legal language on it, the fact that there's no announcement bothers me.

Urban caricature 1: in housing developments of a certain sort, normally those built by a council sometime in the middle of the 20th century, no matter what time of day you walk round it there will always be someone tinkering with a car engine in front of their house.

Too early to work out the urban caricature for Abbey Manor yet..........

Leadership 1

Mulling on the difference between a prophet and a leader. Is a prophet someone who tells the truth regardless of whether people go with him/her, whilst a leader waits for the tide to shift so that their words/actions are timed for maximum impact? (There must be a better way of saying this, but I'm still waking up)

e.g. General Dannatt's comments on Iraq: had he made them earlier in the campaign, would he have been sacked? From the people I know in the armed forces, there is widespread agreement on the ground with what he says, and the government knows it. The army is no longer sure why it's there, nor whether it's really achieved much, so as a leader he is speaking for his followers in a way which has maximum influence. You can't get much better than the PM agreeing with every word you say....

Different sort of leadership: an evening last night led by our Diocesan finance people. I've been to these before, and finished most evenings hunting around for my will to live. Someone described last night as 'almost inspiring', which is about the best that a Board of Finance will ever get! It was basically about mission, and how to resource mission both within the parish and from the Diocese. To me it communicated 2 things a) we've got a vision for the church and b) we're on you're side. Those are 2 good things to hear from your leaders.

There was one fly in the ointment: 1 speaker told us several times that the church is growing, then flashed up figures which showed that the opposite is true, at least in Bath and Wells Diocese. Ooops.

reason and religion

Fascinating article in todays Guardian, linked here on how our society struggles to cope with people being overtly religious.

Secular society can't understand faith, or how it's expressed, which is why anyone at all committed is labelled a 'fundamentalist', because once someone is the f-word, we no longer need to listen to what they are saying, as it must be nonsense.

Another great link discovered today to YouTube, - having already seen too much spoof reality TV, my first reaction was 'how much of this is for real', but once my cynical half had been duly reprimanded, I just sat and watched with a smile on my face. If even someone offering 'free hugs' gets banned by the police, then it makes it easier to understand why Jesus was crucified